soul splitting

Another blown-up episode, the biggest yet, involving third parties, the law, and formalities. I've chosen to intervene after the right time had passed. Had I intervened earlier, perhaps the later complications would not have come. And things would not have escalated. But I chose to withdraw. One friend described a similar, albeit more harrowing, experience, when she promptly chose a stand right in the middle of all the action. On the right side.

I'm reading a book about first year at law school, and being a lawyer in general, the author warned of the consequences in believing that the "right answer" does not matter, as law professors so assuredly insists. Rather, one must use reasoning to find support on both sides, and then instantly take the ground from under them by switching to the other army. It's a frenzied back and forth. A chess match played against the self. I relished in it. Now I see why. I see its ugly implications, purple and black like a bruise, in a panoramic and magnified view as I crash back to the real world.

Why do I love not picking a side? Why do I prize the tool--rationality--above the end it is helping to achieve? Detachment. Cowardice. Perhaps a more deeply rooted and subtle vice. I've tested out my principles with the hot iron of reason, but wielding them in the face of the enemy is quite another matter. Who was the enemy? I have a feeling I could know the answer if I wanted. Yet I never approach this last step of the game. Knowing my opponent would mean I would have to spring to action, or forever hold myself as a soul-split being, where even neutral rationality could not save me. I am not a being of action, but only of observation, perhaps even of judgment. But action. Action! Something reserved only for the brave and quick, eludes me. Or perhaps more accurately, I elude it. One day I fear some sort of undesirable event, akin to evil, will be brought into the world because of my allowances, one day I fear I will be defined by moral abdication. People always praise those who helped house the persecuted in the time of Nazism. I always knew I would not be one of them. I live in gratitude that I do not live in trying times, because the test of character will be one I will surely struggle with. And one I have a real possibility of failing.

**

collateral damage

I once wrote that being at home is the bread and butter to my writing. And that will continue to be true...so long as my writing remains angst-driven and teenage like. A regular Twilight novel, sans glittering skin in the sun. Being drafted into and allowed back from the war of first semester law school, it felt like a homecoming was the exact right remedy, and its sweet syrupy-ness should have lingered longer. But it wasn't. And it didn't. Again the protagonist is reduced to furious, incomprehensible salt drops in a locked bathroom, as only living with blood-bound relations can conjure. Over a fight that she wasn't even a part of. How can kids from divorces, the mother of all such fights, survive it? The spoils of a different kind of war, the children sit unnoticed amid the canon fumes. After the battle. After the conquer and divide. After the newly-minted declarations and anthems. Someone notices the kids again. Their silence the loudest all along. I wonder how they survive it. Because like a vaccine, these little bursts of regular, self-introduced venom keeps the real thing at bay. So tonight was only a decimal of what the true veterans have come back from. How do they survive their Vietnam when I can barely survive the empty words of the Cold War?

**

trial at chrismas time

I haven't written in a while, let's blame it on law school, which is, let's be fair, much more intense than undergrad, especially as we hurtle towards first round of finals. The other factor is that life has been boring as of late. But it's Christmas time, so I will do a blog post with what holiday cheer I can muster after expending much energy stressing uselessly about exams. Despite everyone's sighs over corny Christmas music, I happen to love the Christmas atmosphere. A Michael Buble rendition of a Christmas song, a hot cup of latte warming cold hands, it's hard not to smile about that picture. Santa Baby has been on replay in higher and higher frequency as I approach finals. It's the only thing that keeps me sane, that and talking with friends who are not in law school.

And let's face it, I haven't exactly let my guard down with anyone in law school yet, there haven't been any friendships that would allow me to talk about something non-law school related. I must confess this process is very very slow-starting. Maybe I'm too picky with friendships. Maybe I'm awkward around new people. Maybe I don't pick the right times and places. And it doesn't help when other people admit to running into the same blocks. (Well, it helps a little.) Because then what are we doing? We want the same things. We are in the same place. We have been whipped by the same cultural expectations and social handbooks for twenty some years. What more could there be besides motive, opportunity, and means? In law, they add up to misconduct beyond a reasonable doubt. In law school, they add up to no conduct plagued by self-doubt. When will the trial be over? Has it even started? Santa baby...bring me a winning verdict. I've been a very good law student this year.

**